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Article: Irrelevance a fine art at bishops' meeting; Curran shines at CTA. (National Conference of Catholic Bishops' meeting; Call to Action meeting with speaker Charles Curran)(Column)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- January 16, 1998
- Author:
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In mid-November, I channel-surfed to Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network -- EWTN -- which offered crosier-to-crosier coverage of the annual meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The meeting gave irrelevance a whole new meaning. The bishops themselves, as if embarrassed by the anemic agenda, closed the meeting a day early.
It reminded me of the symphony timpanist who toured Moscow with his orchestra. "Boy," he said, "this is a helluva long way to lug a bass drum just to hit it once."
The bishops spent a lot of time in executive session, and the long potty breaks in the open sessions were rendered even more painful by ...